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AMERICANS BRITISH REBEL INFOWARS

Counterinsurgency Has Been Calamitous Doctrine

The misconceptions and disinformation that have birthed and fueled America's wars are well-documented, but the calamitous doctrine used is seldom examined. The United States’ reliance on counterinsurgency (COIN) is a failed policy seen firsthand by Col. Gian Gentile, a combat battalion commander in the Iraq War, and he has published a new book that aims to destroy the persistent myths of conflict. Wrong Turn: America's Deadly Embrace of Counterinsurgency should be required reading for anyone who still has visions of a US "victory" emerging from the Middle East.

Michael Arria for Truthout: Let's start by talking about the origins of COIN. When does the doctrine emerge, and why?

Counterinsurgency has been around for a long, long time. However, prior to the end of World War II it often was called other things, like guerilla war or small war. The Romans did a form of counterinsurgency in repressing rebellions in their empire, so too did Henry V as his army was harassed by angry French civilians in the days leading up to Agincourt. But modern counterinsurgency, especially being labeled formally as such, really emerged at the end of World War II with the decline of European empires and the rise of nationalist movements like in Vietnam. In fact, American counterinsurgency as codified in the Army's Field Manual 3-24 made famous by Gen. [David] Petraeus and the Surge, is really nothing more than a rehash of the counterinsurgency doctrines developed by the Americans, British and French during the Cold War. It aims to defeat an insurgency in a foreign land by providing infrastructure, governance, security, local security forces and economic improvement to the host population. The idea behind American counterinsurgency is that once these are provided, the counterinsurgent force will then win the trust and allegiance of the local population, which then will allow for the separation of the people from the insurgents. This at least is the theory behind American COIN; unfortunately, in practice by a foreign occupying power, it simply does not work.

In his dissertation, written in 1987, Petraeus wrote that, "The legacy is Vietnam is unlikely to soon recede as an important influence on America's senior military." A couple decades later, he is creating the COIN Center. What is the story behind many supposed "lessons of Vietnam" being discarded by the US military?

Many counterinsurgency experts have misinterpreted the Vietnam War. For example, Andrew Krepinevich, in his widely read book The Army and Vietnam, believes that the US lost the war in Vietnam because its army was stuck in a conventional-war mindset and couldn't break free to a better way of fighting the war by focusing on pacification and winning hearts and minds. Poppycock; there was no better war to be had in Vietnam, and the reason the United States lost it was not because of a mindlessly stupid army that couldn't figure out how to do COIN correctly combined with monster generals like William C. Westmoreland. No, the United States lost the war because it failed at strategy, and strategy should have discerned that the war was unwinnable based on a moral and material price the American people were willing to pay. But this fundamental truth about America's loss in Vietnam was buried in the years after the war by a bevy of misinformed experts and soldiers who believed that the war could have been won if the Army had only fought it differently. Then Iraq rolled around 40 years later, and the choir of COIN experts started singing the same sad song again. The problem with these "lessons" is that they divert attention away from the underlying motives, policies and strategies of American intervention toward the mechanics - or tactics - of doing them.

Many Americans feel that the reasons behind a continued presence in Afghanistan have never been articulated in any definitive way. How do you perceive the Obama administration's current goals in Afghanistan and where do you see this going in the coming years?

The United States has failed at strategy in Afghanistan. Since early 2002, the United States has suffered over 2,000 Americans killed, with many more seriously wounded. Thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed. The United States has spent close to $1 trillion trying to turn Afghanistan into a modern, functioning state. With these costs, what has the United States achieved? The place is more violent today than it was at the height of the Afghan Surge of troops under Stanley McChrystal in 2009; the government is one of the most corrupt in the world, and the ability of the Afghan security forces is dubious at best. Would Afghanistan have been any worse if the US had left after toppling the Taliban and crushing al Qaeda by early 2002? This question becomes more pointed when one considers the fact that the US had by and large accomplished its core political objective in Afghanistan - the destruction of al-Qaeda - by early 2002. This is why American strategy has failed.

In 2008 you wrote a polarizing piece for World Politics Review called, "Misreading the Surge," in which you detected an undeserved amount of optimism for the military's tactics. Years later, how do you think the celebration of The Surge impacted our policy in Iraq and beyond?

For sure it did. It is entirely possible that if President [George W.] Bush had never appointed Gen. Petraeus as commander in Iraq, but had kept Gen. [George] Casey in command, violence would have declined in the same way that it actually did by the end of 2007. This conclusion is based on extending the trajectory of the conditions that were already developing - the Sunni Awakening and the climax of sectarian violence in December 2006. Because Casey was not advocating a quick withdrawal from Iraq and because the operational framework for the military in Iraq before 2007 was and continued to be counterinsurgency, it is certainly possible that the level of violence would have fallen in the same way as it did after the actual Petraeus Surge. Extending this hypothetical to Afghanistan, it is also entirely possible that without the surge triumph narrative constructed around Petraeus' surge and the mythical belief that COIN worked in Iraq, the discussions surrounding "Surge II" in the Hindu Kush in 2009 might have been tempered by focusing on other, more limited options. Had these options been seriously presented to President Obama in fall 2009 by his military, a different course of action might have been taken. But the reality was that in 2008 and 2009, the surge triumph narrative arrived in full force, dominated thinking on what had happened in Iraq, and convinced key policy makers and military planners that something similar could be applied in Afghanistan.

There is a growing chorus, from a variety of political camps, calling for an American response to the chaos in Syria. What do you make of the analysis you have heard from some in the west, and does it trouble you?

In my personal view, to be sure the United States has interests in what happens in Syria. But I do not believe that those interests are vital, nor do I believe that the United States needs to apply military force to get after the interests that it does have in Syria. The situation there is complex, and there is no clear moral choice for the United States to throw its weight on one side or the other. Moreover, if we have learned anything from Iraq and Afghanistan, it should be that it is quite easy to get involved in a civil war in a foreign land but quite another thing to get out of it. Wars of all type have a momentum all their own, and they become very difficult to end.

Ulster on the Euphrates
The Anglo-American Dirty War in Iraq 

By Chris Floyd

Imagine a city torn by sectarian strife. Competing death squads roam the streets; terrorists stage horrific attacks. Local authority is distrusted and weak; local populations protect the extremists in their midst, out of loyalty or fear. A bristling military occupation exacerbates tensions at every turn, while offering prime targets for bombs and snipers. And behind the scenes, in a shadow world of double-cross and double-bluff, covert units of the occupying power run agents on both sides of the civil war, countenancing -- and sometimes directing -- assassinations, terrorist strikes, torture sessions, and ethnic cleansing.
Is this a portrait of Belfast during "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland? Or a picture of Baghdad today? It is both; and in both cases, one of Britain's most secret – and most criminally compromised – military units has plied its trade in the darkness, "turning" and controlling terrorist killers in a dangerous bid to wring actionable intelligence from blood and betrayal. And America's covert soldiers are right there with them, working side-by-side with their British comrades in the aptly named "Task Force Black," the UK's Sunday Telegraph reports.

Last week, the right-wing, pro-war paper published an early valentine to the "Joint Support Group," the covert unit whose bland name belies its dramatic role at the center of the Anglo-American "dirty war" in Iraq. In gushing, lavish, uncritical prose that could have been (and perhaps was) scripted by the unit itself, the Telegraph lauded the team of secret warriors as "one of the Coalition's most effective and deadly weapons in the fight against terror," running "dozens of Iraqi double-agents," including "members of terrorist groups."

What the story fails to mention is the fact that in its Ulster incarnation, the JSG – then known as the Force Research Unit (FRU) –actively colluded in the murder of at least 15 civilians by Loyalist deaths squads, and an untold number of victims killed, maimed and tortured by the many Irish Republican Army double-agents controlled by the unit. What's more, the man who commanded the FRUduring the height of its depredations – Lt. Col. Gordon Kerr – is in Baghdad now, heading the hugger-mugger Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), a large counter-terrorism force made up of unnamed "existing assets" from the glory days in Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

This despite the fact that a 10-year, $100 million investigation by Britain's top police officer, Lord Stevens, confirmed in 2003 that the Kerr-led FRU "sanctioned killings" through "institutionalized collusion" with both Protestant and Catholic militias during the 1980s and 1990s. Stevens sent dossiers of evidence against Kerr and 20 other security apparatchiks to the Blair government's Director of Public Prosecutions, in the expectation that the fiery Scotsman and the others would be put on trial.

But instead prosecuting Kerr, Blair promoted him: first to a plum assignment as British military attaché in Beijing – effectively the number two man in all of UK military intelligence, as Scotland's Sunday Herald notes – then with the SRR posting to Baghdad, where Kerr and his former FRU mates now apply the "methods developed on the mean streets of Ulster during the Troubles," as the Telegraph breathlessly relates.

The Telegraph puff piece is naturally coy about revealing these methods, beyond the fact that, as in Ireland, the JSG uses "a variety of inducements ranging from blackmail to bribes" to turn Iraqi terrorists into Coalition agents. So to get a better idea of the techniques employed by the group in Baghdad, we must return to those "mean streets of Ulster" and the unit's reign of terror and collusion there, which has been thoroughly documented not only by the exhaustive Stevens inquiries, but also in a remarkable series of investigative reports by the Sunday Herald's Neil Mackay, and in extensive stories by the BBC, the Guardian, the Independent, the Times and others.

We will also see how the operations of the JSG and "Task Force Black" dovetail with U.S. efforts to apply the lessons of its own dirty wars – such as the "Salvador Option" – to Iraq, as well as long-running Bush Administration initiatives to arm and fund "friendly" militias while infiltrating terrorist groups in order to "provoke them into action." It is indeed a picture painted in black, a glimpse at the dark muck that lies beneath the high-flown rhetoric about freedom and civilization forever issuing from the lips of the war leaders.

(Continued after the jump.)

II. Whacking for the Peelers
Gregory Burns had a problem. He was one of Gordon Kerr's FRU informers planted deep inside the IRA, along with two of his friends, Johnny Dignam and Aidan Starrs. But as Mackay noted in a February 2003 story, the already-partnered Burns had acquired a girlfriend on the side, Margaret Perry, 26, a "civilian" Catholic with no paramilitary ties. Forbidden fruit is sweet, of course – but pillow talk is dangerous for an inside man. "Burns didn't keep his mouth shut and [Perry] found out he was working for British intelligence," an FRU officer told Mackay. "He tried to convince her he was a double-agent the IRA had planted in the [British] army – but she didn't buy it."

Burns called his FRU handlers and asked to come in from the cold. He'd been compromised, he said, and now he and his friends needed to get out, with new identities, relocation, good jobs – the usual payoff for trusted agents when the jig was up. But Kerr refused: "He said [Burns] should silence Perry," the FRU man told Mackay. Burns, panicking at thought of the IRA's horrific retributions against informers, insisted: he would have to kill the woman if they didn't bring him in, he told Kerr. Again Kerr refused.

And so Burns arranged a meeting with his lover, to "talk over" the situation. His friends, Aidan and Johnny, volunteered to drive her there: "On the way, they pulled into a forest, beat her to death and buried her in a shallow grave," Mackay notes. Two years later, when her body was found, the IRA put two and two together – and slowly tortured Burns and his two friends to death, after first extracting copious amounts of information about British intelligence operations in Ireland.

'In Kerr's eyes, Burns just wasn't important enough to resettle," the FRU source told the Sunday Herald. "So we ended up with four unnecessary deaths and the compromising of British army intelligence officers, which ultimately put soldiers' lives at risk. To Kerr, it was always a matter of the ends justifying the means."

Then again, Kerr could well afford to sacrifice a few informers here and there to the wrath of the IRA's dreaded "security unit" – because his own prize double agent was the head of that security unit. Codenamed "Stakeknife," Kerr's man presided over, and sometimes administered, the grisly torture-murders of up to 50 men during his tenure in the IRA's upper ranks. The victims included other British double agents who were sacrificed in order to protect Stakeknife's cover, as the Guardian and many other UK papers reported when the agent's work was revealed in 2003. ("Stakeknife" was later identified in the press as Alfredo Scappaticci – an Irishman despite the Italian name, although he continues to deny the charge.)

The FRU also "knowingly allowed soldiers, [police] officers and civilians to die at the hands of IRA bombers in order to protect republican double agents," the Sunday Herald's investigations found. As Mackay reports: "FRU sources said around seven police and army personnel died as a result of military intelligence allowing IRA bombs to be placed during Kerr's time in command of the FRU. They estimate that three civilians also died this way, with casualties in the hundreds."

But some of the worst excesses came from the FRU's handling of operatives on the other side, in the fiercely pro-British Protestant militia the Ulster Defense Association (UDA). Here, among the Loyalists, Kerr's top double agent was Brian Nelson, who became head of intelligence for the UDA. As John Ware put it in the Guardian: "Kerr regarded Nelson as his jewel in the crown… For the next three years [from 1987], Nelson colluded with murder gangs to shoot IRA suspects. Month after month, armed and masked men crashed into homes. Sometimes they got the wrong address or shot the wrong person."

Such as Gerald Slane, a 27-year-old Belfast man shot down in front of his three children. A gun had been found dumped on his property; this, and his Catholicism, was enough to get him assassinated at the order of Kerr's man Nelson. Afterwards, it was found that Slane had no IRA connections.

Another "wrong person" killed by the FRU's agents was the Belfast attorney Pat Finucane, who was shot 14 times in front of his wife and children. Finucane was a civil rights activist who had defended both Catholics and Protestants, but was considered an IRA sympathizer by Loyalists – and a thorn in the side by British authorities. He was killed at Nelson's order by a fellow FRU informer in the UDA, Ken Barrett, who was convicted of the murder but freed last year after as part of an amnesty program in the Northern Ireland peace process. Barrett was unapologetic about his FRU "wetwork" on Finucane. "The peelers [authorities] wanted him whacked," he told a BBC documentary team after his release. "We whacked him and that is the end of the story."

Kerr gave Nelson packages of intelligence files to help facilitate the assassination of UDA targets, including at least four "civilians" with no IRA ties, the Stevens inquiry found. The FRU also obtained "restriction orders" from other British security and military units in Northern Ireland, whereby they would pull their forces from an area when Kerr's UDA agents were going to make a hit there, allowing the killers to get in and get out without hindrance, investigator Nick Davies reports.

Yet the FRU was wary of sharing its own intelligence with other security services – which was the ostensible reason for running the double-agents in the first place. Instead, Kerr engaged in fierce turf wars with other agencies, while "stovepiping" much of his intelligence to the top circles of the UK government, including the cabinet-level Intelligence Committee chaired by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Indeed, when Nelson was finally exposed and brought to trial on five counts of conspiracy to commit murder, Kerr testified in his behalf, noting for the court that Nelson's intelligence "product and his reporting was passed through the intelligence community and at a high level, and from that point of view he has to be considered a very important agent."

As one FRU man told Mackay: "Under Kerr's command…the mindset was one of 'the right people would be allowed to live and wrong people should die.'"

This is the "mindset" now operating in the heart of the Green Zone in Baghdad, where the JSG is carrying out – we are told in glowing terms – precisely the same mission it had in Ulster. a unit which has allowed its agents to torture, murder and commit acts of terrorism, including actions that killed local civilians and the soldiers and intelligence operatives of their own country.

III. The White House Green Light
Of course, Kerr and his Baghdad black-op crew are not alone in the double-dealing world of Iraqi counterinsurgency. The Pentagon's ever-expanding secret armies are deeply enmeshed in such efforts as well. As Sy Hersh has reported ("The Coming Wars," New Yorker, Jan. 24, 2005), after his re-election in 2004, George W. Bush signed a series of secret presidential directives that authorized the Pentagon to run virtually unrestricted covert operations, including a reprise of the American-backed, American-trained death squads employed by authoritarian regimes in Central and South America during the Reagan Administration, where so many of the Bush faction cut their teeth – and made their bones.

"Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” a former high-level intelligence official said to Hersh. "We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it." A Pentagon insider added: "We’re going to be riding with the bad boys." Another role model for the expanded dirty war cited by Pentagon sources, said Hersh, was Britain's brutal repression of the Mau Mau in Kenya during the 1950s, when British forces set up concentration camps, created their own terrorist groups to confuse and discredit the insurgency, and killed thousands of innocent civilians in quashing the uprising.

Bush's formal greenlighting of the death-squad option built upon an already securely-established base, part of a larger effort to turn the world into a "global free-fire zone" for covert operatives, as one top Pentagon official told Hersh. For example, in November 2002 a Pentagon plan to infiltrate terrorist groups and "stimulate" them into action was uncovered by William Arkin, then writing for the Los Angeles Times. The new unit, the "Proactive, Pre-emptive Operations Group," was described in the Pentagon documents as "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that brings "together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception."

Later, in August 2004, then deputy Pentagon chief Paul Wolfowitz appeared before Congress to ask for $500 million to arm and train non-governmental "local militias" to serve as U.S. proxies for "counter-insurgency and "counterterrorist" operations in "ungoverned areas" and hot spots around the world, Agence France Presse (and virtually no one else) reported at the time. These hired paramilitaries were to be employed in what Wolfowitz called an "arc of crisis" that just happened to stretch across the oil-bearing lands and strategic pipeline routes of Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America.

By then, the Bush Administration had already begun laying the groundwork for an expanded covert war in the hot spot of Iraq.  In November 2003, it created a "commando squad" drawn from the sectarian militias of five major Iraqi factions, as the Washington Post reported that year. Armed, funded and trained by the American occupation forces, and supplied with a "state-of-the-art command, control and communications center" from the Pentagon, the new Iraqi commandos were loosed on the then-nascent Iraqi insurgency – despite the very prescient fears of some U.S. officials "that various Sunni or Shiite factions could eventually use the service to secretly undermine their political competitors," as the Post noted.

And indeed, in early 2005 – not long after Bush's directives loosed the "Salvador Option" on Iraq – the tide of death-squad activity began its long and bloody rise to the tsunami-like levels we see today. Ironically, the first big spike of mass torture-murders, chiefly in Sunni areas at the time, coincided with "Operation Lightning," a much ballyhooed effort by American and Iraqi forces to "secure" Baghdad. The operation featured a mass influx of extra troops into the capital; dividing the city into manageable sectors, then working through them one by one; imposing hundreds of checkpoints to lock down all insurgent movements; and establishing a 24-hour presence of security and military forces in troubled neighborhoods, the Associated Press reported in May 2005. In other words, it was almost exactly the same plan now being offered as Bush's "New Way Forward," the controversial "surge."

But the "Lightning" fizzled in a matter of weeks, and the death squads grew even bolder. Brazen daylight raids by "men dressed in uniforms" of Iraqi police or Iraqi commandos or other Iraqi security agencies swept up dozens of victims at a time. For months, U.S. "advisers" to Iraqi security agencies – including veterans of the original "Salvador Option" – insisted that these were Sunni insurgents in stolen threads, although many of the victims were Sunni civilians. Later, the line was changed: the chief culprits were now "rogue elements" of the various sectarian militias that had "infiltrated" Iraq's institutions.

But as investigative reporter Max Fuller has pointed out in his detailed examination of information buried in reams of mainstream news stories and public Pentagon documents, the vast majority of atrocities then attributed to "rogue" Shiite and Sunni militias were in fact the work of government-controlled commandos and "special forces," trained by Americans, "advised" by Americans and run largely by former CIA assets. As Fuller puts it: "If there are militias in the Ministry of Interior, you can be sure that they are militias that stand to attention whenever a U.S. colonel enters the room." And perhaps a British lieutenant colonel as well

With the Anglo-American coalition so deeply embedded in dirty war – infiltrating terrorist groups, "stimulating" them into action," protecting "crown jewel" double-agents no matter what the cost, "riding with the bad boys," greenlighting the "Salvador Option" – it is simply impossible to determine the genuine origin of almost any particular terrorist outrage or death squad atrocity in Iraq. All of these operations take place in the shadow world, where terrorists are sometimes government operatives and vice versa, and where security agencies and terrorist groups interpenetrate in murky thickets of collusion and duplicity. This moral chaos leaves "a kind of blot/To mark the full-fraught man and best indued/With some suspicion," as Shakespeare's Henry V says.

What's more, the "intelligence" churned out by this system is inevitably tainted by the self-interest, mixed motives, fear and criminality of those who provide it. The ineffectiveness of this approach can be seen in the ever-increasing, many-sided civil war that is tearing Iraq apart. If these covert operations really are intended to quell the violence, they clearly have had the opposite effect. If they have some other intention, the pious defenders of civilization – who approve these activities with promotions, green lights and unlimited budgets – aren't telling.
This article was first published at Truthout.org

BRITISH WMD FALSE FLAG ALERT

In British Occupied Ireland British False Flags are a regular feature of the Brutish occupation to justify their State Terrorism, of murdering journalists, human rights lawyers, human rights activists, internment without trial on the basis of their false terrorist narrative. British WMD False Flag propaganda, primarily delivered by the paedophile blackmailed, BBC World Service as justification for the invasion and high;y lucrative war in Iraq, that caused the war crime, of more than a million civilian murders. So too was similar British claims for their war crimes in Libya. Now it is happening again in Syria.

"

 Documents allegedly "hacked" belonging to UK-based defense contractor Britam (official website here) appear to show the company considering an offer from Qatar to use Libyan chemical weapons in Homs, Syria in order to frame both the Syrian and Russian governments. The plan involves using Britam's Ukrainian mercenaries and Soviet-era chemical weapon shells brought in from Libya's large, Al Qaeda-linked, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) controlled arsenals.

 

The e-mail reads:

Phil

We've got a new offer. It's about Syria again. Qataris propose an attractive deal and swear that the idea is approved by Washington. 

We'll have to deliver a CW to Homs, a Soviet origin g-shell from Libya similar to those that Assad should have. They want us to deploy our Ukrainian personnel that should speak Russian and make a video record.

Frankly, I don't think it's a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous. Your opinion?

Kind regards

David

It should be remembered that this is not confirmed - and there is most likely no way that it can ever be confirmed. However, in light of recent, and continuous attempts by the Israelis and NATO to justify a military intervention in Syria based on fears of "chemical weapons," and considering how a nearly decade-long war and occupation was fought in neighboring Iraq under similar and patently false pretenses, every potential piece of evidence should be taken seriously.

It should also be remembered that during the Iraq War, British special forces were caught carrying out false flag attacks, dressed as sectarian extremists in Basra, Iraq, and shooting at Iraqi policemen. After the British soldiers were arrested, the British army attacked the police station they were being held at to free them. The precedence of Western nations using false flag operations, including terrorism, to achieve geopolitical objectives beyond their borders most certainly exists.

The Libyan Connection 

Mention of acquiring chemical weapons from Libya is particularly troubling. Libya's arsenal had fallen into the hands of sectarian extremists with NATO assistance in 2011 in the culmination of efforts to overthrow the North African nation . Since then, Libya's militants led by commanders of Al Qaeda's Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) have armed sectarian extremists across the Arab World, from as far West as Mali, to as far East as Syria.

In addition to small arms, heavier weapons are also making their way through this extensive network. The Washington Post in their article, "Libyan missiles on the loose," reported:

"Two former CIA counterterrorism officers told me last week that technicians recently refurbished 800 of these man-portable air-defense systems (known as MANPADS) — some for an African jihadist group called Boko Haram that is often seen as an ally of al-Qaeda — for possible use against commercial jets flying into Niger, Chad and perhaps Nigeria."

While undoubtedly these weapons are also headed to Niger, Chad, and perhaps Nigeria, they are veritably headed to Syria. Libyan LIFG terrorists are confirmed to be flooding into Syria from Libya. In November 2011, the Telegraph in their article, "Leading Libyan Islamist met Free Syrian Army opposition group," would report:

Abdulhakim Belhadj, head of the Tripoli Military Council and the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, "met with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey," said a military official working with Mr Belhadj. "Mustafa Abdul Jalil (the interim Libyan president) sent him there."

Another Telegraph article, "Libya’s new rulers offer weapons to Syrian rebels," would admit

Syrian rebels held secret talks with Libya's new authorities on Friday, aiming to secure weapons and money for their insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad's regime, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

At the meeting, which was held in Istanbul and included Turkish officials, the Syrians requested "assistance" from the Libyan representatives and were offered arms, and potentially volunteers.

"There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria," said a Libyan source, speaking on condition of anonymity. "There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see."

Later that month, some 600 Libyan terrorists would be reported to have entered Syria to begin combat operations and have been flooding into the country ever since.

 

Image: Libyan Mahdi al-Harati of the US State Department, United Nations, and the UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf)-listed terrorist organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), addressing fellow terrorists in Syria. Harati is now commanding a Libyan brigade operating inside of Syria attempting to destroy the Syrian government and subjugate the Syrian population. Traditionally, this is known as "foreign invasion." 

Washington Post's reported "loose missiles" in Libya are now turning up on the battlefield in Syria. While outfits like the Guardian, in their article "Arms and the Manpads: Syrian rebels get anti-aircraft missiles," are reporting the missiles as being deployed across Syria, they have attempted to downplay any connection to Libya's looted arsenal and the Al Qaeda terrorists that have imported them. In contrast, Times has published open admissions from terrorists themselves admitting they are receiving heavy weapons including surface-to-air missiles from Libya.

In Time's article, "Libya’s Fighters Export Their Revolution to Syria," it is reported:
 

Some Syrians are more frank about the assistance the Libyans are providing. “They have heavier weapons than we do,” notes Firas Tamim, who has traveled in rebel-controlled areas to keep tabs on foreign fighters. “They brought these weapons to Syria, and they are being used on the front lines.” Among the arms Tamim has seen are Russian-made surface-to-air missiles, known as the SAM 7.

Libyan fighters largely brush off questions about weapon transfers, but in December they claimed they were doing just that. “We are in the process of collecting arms in Libya,” a Libyan fighter in Syria told the French daily Le Figaro. “Once this is done, we will have to find a way to bring them here.”

Clearly NATO intervention in Libya has left a vast, devastating arsenal in the hands of sectarian extremists, led by US State Department, United Nations, and the UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf)-listed terrorist organization LIFG, that is now exporting these weapons and militants to NATO's other front in Syria. It is confirmed that both Libyan terrorists and weapons are crossing the Turkish-Syrian border, with NATO assistance, and it is now clear that heavy weapons, including anti-aircraft weapons have crossed the border too. 

The Guardian reported in their November 2011 article, "Libyan chemical weapons stockpiles intact, say inspectors," that:

Libya's stockpiles of mustard gas and chemicals used to make weapons are intact and were not stolen during the uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi, weapons inspectors have said.

But also reported that:

The abandonment or disappearance of some Gaddafi-era weapons has prompted concerns that such firepower could erode regional security if it falls into the hands of Islamist militants or rebels active in north Africa. Some fear they could be used by Gaddafi loyalists to spread instability in Libya.

Last month Human Rights Watch urged Libya's ruling national transitional council to take action over large numbers of heavy weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, it said were lying unguarded more than two months after Gaddafi was overthrown.

On Wednesday the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said the UN would send experts to Libya to help ensure nuclear material and chemical weapons did not fall into the wrong hands.

And while inspectors claim that Libya's chemical weapons are in the "government's" hands and not "extremists'," it is clear by the Libyan government's own admission, that they themselves are involved in sending fighters and weapons into Syria.

Bottom Line

It cannot be said for certain whether the e-mail allegedly sent by Britam is genuine, but the West is openly subverting Syria through the funding and arming of terrorists from across the Arab World. Terrorists are confirmed to be moving through NATO-member Turkey, with the Turkish government's explicit assistance. Heavy weapons are both being supplied and paid for by the West, and likewise brought across Syria's borders through NATO-member Turkey.

Despite this, the momentum of NATO's armed, proxy-aggression toward Syria has been broken multiple times. Threats of a no-fly zone are waning as NATO's proxies are neutralized with little left to establish a no-fly zone over. The fear now for NATO and its various partners across the region, from Israel to Erdogan in Turkey, to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, is that there will be nothing left of the so-called "Free Syrian Army" (FSA) to intervene on behalf of.

With time running out and the Syrian people still stalwartly defending their nation, it is possible that the desperate measures described in the alleged e-mail from Britam have been considered - as the rhetorical groundwork to accommodate such measures has already been long-ago laid out by the complicit Western media.  The purpose of exposing this alleged e-mail is not necessarily to accuse Britam, but to remind readers to be vigilant. And should "chemical weapons" be used in Syria in an apparent joint Syrian-Russian operation, Britam, the United Kingdom, and Qatar should be the first suspects that come to mind."

          http://www.releasemartincorey.com

BRIT HAREM OUT PEACE SYRIA

The Only Way To Bring Peace to Syria

By Mairead Maguire

May 26, 2013 "Information Clearing House" - After a 10 days (1-11 May, 2013) visit to Lebanon and Syria, leading a 16 person delegation from 8 countries, invited by Mussalaha Reconciliation Movement, I have returned hopeful that peace is possible in Syria, if all outside interference is stopped and the Syrians are allowed to solve their own problems upholding their right to self-determination.

An appeal to end all violence and for Syrians to be left alone from outside interference was made by all those we met during our visit to Syria. We have tried to forward it to the International community in our Concluding Declaration.

During our visit we went to refugee camps, affected communities, and met religious leaders, combatants, government representatives, opposition delegations and many others, perpetrators and victims, in Lebanon and Syria.

1. Visits to refugee camps: In Lebanon we visited several refugee camps, hosted by Lebanese or Palestinian communities. One Woman said: “before this conflict started we were happy and had a good life (there is free education, free healthcare, subsidies for fuel, in Syria,) and now we live in poverty”. Her daughter and son-in-law (a pharmacist and engineer) standing on a cement floor in a Palestinian refugee camp, with not even a mattress, told us that this violence had erupted to everyone surprise and spread so quickly they were all still in shock, but when well-armed, foreign fighters came to Homs, they took over their homes, raped their women, and killed young males who refused to join their ranks, so the people fled in terror. They said that these foreign fighters were from many countries like Libyans, Saudis, Tunisians, Chechens, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Emiratis, Lebanese, Jordanians, Turkish, Europeans, Australian, and these gangs are financed and trained by foreign governments. They attach suicide vests around peoples’ bodies and threaten to explode them if they don’t do what they are told. One refugee woman asked me ‘when can we go home’? (To my great delight a few days later in Damascus I met a woman working on a government programme which is helping refugees to return to Syria and over 200 have returned to date).

Religious and government leaders have called upon people not to flee Syria and it is to be hoped many will heed this call, as after seeing so many Syrian refugees living in tents and being exploited in so many ways, including sexually, I believe the best solution is the stability of Syria so its people feel safe enough to stay in Syria. If refugees continue to flee Syria then surrounding countries could be destabilized, causing the domino effect and destabilizing the entire Middle East.

Many people have fled into camps in surrounding countries like Turkey, Jordan, or Lebanon, all of which are trying to manage the huge influx of Syrian refugees. Although the host countries are doing their best to cope they are overwhelmed by refugee numbers. (UNHCR’s official figure of refugees is one million). Through our meetings we have been informed that Turkey invites Syrian refugees into the country and forbids them to go back home. It is documented that Syrian refugees in Turkey and Jordan are mistreated. Some young Syrian refugee girls are sold for forced marriage in Jordan. From OHCHR reports we know that more than 4 million Syrians are displaced inside their own country, living in great need.

A representative from Red Cross, told us that there is freedom to do their work throughout Syria for all NGO and the Syrian Red crescent in co-ordination with the Ministry of Social affairs and under such dire circumstances, they are doing their best, providing services to as many people as possible. However there is a great shortage of funds for them to cope with this humanitarian tragedy of refugees and internally displaced population. The economic sanctions, as in Iraq, are causing great hardship to many people and all those whom we met called for them to be lifted. Our delegation called for the lifting of these illegal US-led sanctions that target the Syrian Population for purely political reasons in order to achieve regime change.

2. Hospitals: We visited the hospitals and saw many people injured by shootings, bombings, and armed attacks. A moderate Sunni Imam told me how he was abducted by jihadists, who tortured him, cut off his ear, tried to cut his throat, sliced his legs, and left him for dead. He said when he goes back to his mosque they will slaughter him. He told us “these men are foreign fighters, jihadists from foreign countries, well-armed, well trained, with money, they are in our country to destroy it. They are not true Muslims but are religious extremist/fundamentalists terrorizing, abducting, killing our people”. The government spokesman also confirmed that they have in detention captured foreign fighters from 29 countries, including Chechens, Iraqis, and many others. The Ministry of Health showed us a documentary on the terrible killings by Jihadists and the terror caused by these foreigners with the killing of medics and destruction of medical infrastructure of the Syrian State which has made it difficult to answer the needs of the population.

3. Meeting with Opposition: Our delegation participated in an open forum with many representatives of internal opposition’s parties. One political opponent who was in prison 24 years under the Assad regime, and has been out for 11 years, wants political change with more than 20 other internal opposition components, but without outside interference and the use of violence. We met with ‘armed’ opposition people in a local community who said they had accepted the government’s offer of amnesty and were working for a peaceful way forward. One man told me he had accepted money from Jihadists to fight but had been shocked by their cruelty and the way they treated fellow Syrian Muslims considering them as not real Muslims. He said foreign Jihadists wanted to take over Syria, not save it.

The 10th May a part of our delegation headed to Homs, invited by the opposition community of Al Waar city where displaced families from Baba Amro, Khalidiyeh and other rebel’s strongholds seek refuge. The Delegation saw all the conditions of this city and is studying a Pilot Project for Reconciliation and peaceful reintegration between this community and the surrounded non rebel communities (Shia and Alaouites) with whom 15 days ago an agreement of non-belligerence has been signed through the auspices of Mussalaha.

4. Meeting with Officials: Our Delegation met, and spoke, at the Parliament, and also with the Governor, Prime Minister and 7 other Ministries. We were given details of the new Constitution and political reforms being put in place, and plans for elections in 2014. Government Ministers admitted that they had made mistakes in being slow to respond to legitimate demands for change from civil community but these were now being implemented. They told us when the conflict started it was peaceful for change but quickly turned into bloodshed when armed men killed many soldiers.

In the first days soldiers were unarmed but when people started asking for protection the government and military responded to defend the people and in self-defence.

When we enquired from the Prime Minister regarding the allegation that the Syrian Government had used Sarin gas, he told us that as soon as news came from Aleppo that allegedly gas had been used, his government invited immediately the UN to come in to investigate, but heard nothing from them. Most recently however, a UN investigator, High Commissioner Carla Del Ponte, has confirmed that it was rebels, not Syrian government, who used Sarin gas. During meeting with Justice Minister, we requested that a list of 72 non-violent political dissidents currently detained be released. The Justice Minister said after checking those listed were indeed non-violent political dissidents, he would, in principal, agree to the release of these nonviolent detainees. He also informed us they do not implement the death penalty and it is hoped that when things settle in Syria they will move to have the death penalty abolished. We also asked the Justice Minister (an international lawyer) about Syrian Government’s Human rights abuses, namely the artillery shelling into no-go areas being held by jihadists and armed opposition. The Minister accepted those facts but alleged that the Government had a duty to clear these areas. We suggested there was a better way to deal with the problem than artillery shelling but he insisted that the government had responsibility to clear the areas of rebel forces and this was the way in which they were doing it.

The Ministers and Governor said that President Assad was their President and has their support. There were many people we spoke to who expressed such sentiments. However, some young people said they support the opposition but in order to protect the Unity of Syria from outside destruction, they will support the government and President Assad, until the election next year and then they will vote for the opposition. They said the Doha Coalition in Qatar does not represent them and that no one outside Syria has a right to remove President Assad but the Syrian people through the elections next year. The journalists in Syria are in great danger from the religious extremist/fundamentalists, and during my visit to a television station a young journalist told me how his mother was killed by jihadists and he showed me his arm where he had been shot and almost killed.

5. Meeting with religious leaders: We attended in the Omayyad Mosque in Damascus a prayer gathering led by the Grand Mufti of the Syrian Arab Republic, Dr. Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun and the Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregory III Laham with the delegate of Greek Orthodox Patriarch John X Yazigi, and clerics of all traditions. The Assembly prayed for the peace and unity of Syria and the non-interference of outsiders in their country. They stressed the conflict in Syria is not a religious conflict, as Muslims and Christians have always lived together in Syria, and they are, (in spite of living with suffering and violence much of which is not of their own making), unified in their wish to be a light of peace and reconciliation to the world. The Patriarch said that from the Mosque and Christian churches goes out a great movement of peace and reconciliation and asked both those inside and outside Syria, to reject all violence and support the people of Syria in this work of dialogue, reconciliation and peacemaking.

The Muslim and Christian Spiritual Leaders are very conscious if the religious extremist/fundamentalists gain momentum and control Syria, the future of those who are not supportive of fundamentalists like moderate Muslims, Christians, minorities, and other Syrians is in great danger. Indeed the Middle East could lose its precious pluralistic social fabric with the Christians, like in Iraq, being the first to flee the country. This would be a tragedy for all concerned in this multi-religious, multi-cultural secular Syria, once a light of peaceful conviviality in the Arab world.

Overview

Following many authorized reports in the mainstream Media and our own evidence, I can stress that the Syrian State and its population are under a proxy war led by foreign countries and directly financed and backed mainly by Qatar which has imposed its views on the Arab League. Turkey, a part of the Lebanese opposition, and some of the Jordan authorities offer a safe haven to a diversity of jihadist groups, each with its own agenda, recruited from many countries. Bands of jihadists armed and financed from foreign countries invade Syria through Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon, crossing porous frontiers in an effort to destabilize Syria. There are an estimated 50,000 foreign jihadist fighters terrorizing Syria. Those death squads are destroying systematically the Syrian State infrastructures (Electricity, Oil, Gas and water plants, High Tension Pylons, hospitals, schools, public buildings, cultural heritage sites and even religious sanctuaries). Moreover the country is submerged by snipers, bombers, agitators, bandits. They use aggression and Sharia rules and hijack the freedom and dignity of the Syrian population. They torture and kill those who refuse to join them. They have strange religious beliefs which make them feel comfortable even perpetrating the cruellest acts like killing and torture of their opponents. It is well documented that many of those terrorists are permanently under stimulants like Captagon. The general lack of security unleashes the terrible phenomenon of abduction for ransoms or for political pressure. Thousands of innocents are missing, among them the two Bishops, Youhanna Ibrahim and Paul Yazigi, many priests and Imams.

UN and EU economic sanctions as well as a severe embargo are pushing Syria to the edge of social collapse. Unfortunately the international media network is ignoring those realities and is bent on demonizing, lying, destabilizing the country and fuelling more violence and contradiction.

In summary: the war in Syria is not as depicted a civil war but a proxy war with serious breaches of International laws and the Humanitarian International laws. The protection of the foreign fighters by some foreign countries among the most powerful gives them a kind of an unaccountability that pushes them with impunity to all kind of cruel deeds against innocent civilians. Even war conventions are not respected resulting in many war crimes and, even, crimes against Humanity.

Conclusion

During our visit to Syria, our delegation was met with great kindness by everyone and I offer to each one who facilitated or hosted our Delegation my most sincere feelings of gratitude. We witnessed that the Syrian people have suffered very deeply and continue to do so. The entire population of 23 million people are under tremendous threat of continued infiltration by foreign terrorists. Many are still stunned by the horrors and suddenness of all this violence and worried their country will be attacked and divided by outside forces, and are all too aware that geopolitical forces are at work to destabilize Syria for political control, oil and resources. One Druze leader said ‘if westerns want our Oil – both Lebanon and Syria have oil reserves – let us negotiate for it, but do not destroy our country to take it’. In Syria memories of next door Iraq’s destruction by US-UK-NATO forces are fresh in people’s minds, including in the minds of the one and a half million Iraqis who fled Iraqi’s conflict, including many Christians, and were given refuge in Syria by the Syrian Government.

The greatest hope we took was from Mussalaha, a non-political movement from all sections of Syrian society, which has working teams throughout Syria and is proceeding through dialogue to building peace and reconciliation. Mussalaha mediates between armed gunmen and security forces, helps get release of many people who have been abducted, and brings together all parties to the conflict for dialogue and practical solutions. It was this movement which hosted us, under the leadership of Mother Agnes-Mariam, Superior of Saint James’ Monastery, supported by the Patriarch Gregory III Laham, head of the Catholic Hierarchy of Syria.

This great civil community movement building a peace process and National Reconciliation from the ground up, will, if given space, time, and non-interference from outside, help bring Peace to Syria. They recognize that there must be an unconditional, all inclusive political solution, with compromises and they are confident this is happening at many levels of society and is the only way forward for Syrian peace.

I support this National Reconciliation process which, many Syrian believe, is the only way to bring Peace to SYRIA and the entire Middle East. I am myself committed to this peaceful process and hope that the International Community, the Religious and Political Leaders, as well as any person of good will, will help Syria to bypass violence and prejudice and anchor in a new era of Social peace and prosperity. This cradle of civilizations where Syria occupies the heart is an enormous spiritual heritage for humanity, let us strive to establish a non-war zone and proclaim it an OASIS of Peace for the Human Family.

Mairead Maguire, Nobel peace laureate. Spokesperson for Mussalaha International -  peacepeople.com

BRITISH STATE TERRORISM FROM IRELAND TO SYRIA

"He said if I was ready to swear the oath for it, he could join me into the organization there and then. I said I was ready, so he told me to put my hand on the gun which was on the bible, and repeat certain words after him. They were to the effect that for the rest of my life I’d be loyal to the organization, to God and to Ulster. Those were the things that I swore allegiance to, three things in that order. His next words to me were I was now a member of the organization for the rest of my life, and the only way I’d ever get out of it was in a box. I’m not sure if I should have told you that much." (Loyalist death squad member interviewed by Tony Parker)

Britain the United Kingdom (UK) call it what you may, stands accused of mentoring Ulster loyalistparamilitaries during The Troubles, within what they call Northern Ireland and sponsoring cross-border operations into the free stae or waht some call the Republic of Ireland. In the 1970s, loyalist extremists known as the "Glenanne gang" carried out mNY shootings and bombings against THE Irish Catholic and Irish nationalist community. The gang included the illegal Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), the British Army and police officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).

 It wascommanded by British Military Intelligence and RUC Special Branch. The human rights group the Pat Finucane Centre attributed 87 killings to the Glenanne gang which includes the Dublin and Monaghan bombings (which murdered 33 civilians), the Miami Showband killings and the Reavey and O'Dowd murders. Britain is also accused of providing intelligence material, training, firearms, explosives and lists of people that their secret services want murdered.

On 17 April 2003, Sir John Stevens published his third inquiry on collusion between the British Army, the RUC with Loyalist paramilitaries. It stated there had been collusion in the high-profile murder of solicitor Pat Finucane.

In 1999,  RUC officer John Weir made a sworn affidavit in which he admitted colluding with loyalist paramilitaries implicating many other police officers and soldiers with the same. He recounted in detail the killings of 15 Catholics, claimed his superiors had knowledge of 76 more assassinations carried out by the UVF. He also alleged that Britain's SAS murdered Loyalists who planned to expose collusion.

Below is an article by By Finian Cunningham

"British State Terrorism from Northern Ireland to Syria
December 16, 2012 "Information Clearing House" -  This story connects far-flung places. Kenya, Malaya, Northern Ireland and now Syria. The one over-arching theme is British counter-insurgency strategy, or more plainly, the use of state terrorism by British forces to achieve political objectives.

The story came alive again this week with two seemingly unrelated news developments. First, we learn of deeper involvement of Britain’s military in the violence raging across Syria. British military officers and Special Forces are reportedly training - in Jordanian territory - foreign-backed militants to step up their campaign of terrorism across Syria.

These terror gangs, whom the Western mainstream media call “freedom fighters”, have been plunging Syria into bloody chaos for the past 22 months, with car bombs ripping through civilian neighbourhoods and death squads massacring whole villages, the latest being Aqrab in Hama Province where over 125 people where murdered this week. Ample evidence shows that the mercenaries, recruited from various countries including Libya, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, are covertly supplied with weapons and training from  Britain via conduits of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

The surge in violence and killing of civilians, with a notable agenda of inciting sectarian war, is proof that the British expertise in fomenting terror is paying dividends for the Western imperialist objective of destabilizing Syrian society and the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The second development this week was the publication of an official British report into the murder 23 years ago of Belfast lawyer Pat Finucane. The two issues, Syrian violence and the killing of Mr Finucane, are intimately related - although the British government and its media have done their best to bury any connection.

Let’s unravel the layers of obfuscation.

When the review of Mr Finucane’s murder by Sir Desmond de Silva QC was published this week, British Prime Minister David Cameron offered an apology to the family of the Belfast man. “I am deeply sorry,” said Cameron in the British House of Commons, and he went on to acknowledge that the killing pointed to “shocking levels of collusion” between British security forces and loyalist death squads. The latter were paramilitaries recruited from Northern Ireland’s pro-British civilian population that perpetrated many heinous murders during the conflict in that territory between 1969-1994.

However, the widow of Mr Finucane and their children denounced the latest review as a “white wash”. Geraldine Finucane has good reason to dismiss the report because it portrays the murder of her husband as a rogue act of violence. Cameron added to the white wash by saying that the case represented a “failing” by the British military forces to prevent the murder.

This is typical official British deception. For what the murder of Pat Finucane reveals is not a failure, but rather a successful deployment of Britain’s policy of state terrorism - a policy that involved the systematic collusion between British military intelligence and loyalist death squads. This practice was and is a central part of British counter-insurgency tactics - a policy that was overseen from the highest office of British government in Downing Street.

Much of Britain’s “dirty war” strategy, as an institutional practice, can be attributed to one of its most decorated military commanders - General Sir Frank Kitson.

Kitson published his war manual - Low Intensity Operations - in 1971. It has since become a standard text for British military counter-insurgency techniques, or as we have noted, state terrorism.

Kitson developed his techniques from his involvement in suppressing popular uprisings in the British colonies of Kenya during the Mau-Mau rebellion (1953-55) and in Malaya (1957) against a communist
insurgency there.

In 1970, the then Brigadier was dispatched to Northern Ireland, which itself was on the cusp of a renewed Irish republican struggle against British rule in that province of the United Kingdom. One of Kitson’s innovations was the recruitment of what he called “counter gangs”. For his endeavours and “meritrocious service”, he was later knighted by the British Queen, later going on to serve as her aide-de-camp and elevated to Commander-in-Chief of UK land forces from 1982-1985.

 

The callous objective devised by Kitson was to use British proxy death squads to sow as much terror and mayhem as possible in order to destroy popular insurgency. This was the beginning of Britain’s policy of collusion in Northern Ireland, which operated for nearly three decades and claimed hundreds of lives. From the British government point of view, one great advantage of this policy was to provide “plausible denial” to the authorities for the state terrorism that they were unleashing. This advantage still pertains to this day, as can be seen from the latest review into Pat Finucane’s murder and the hollow apology from David Cameron “for shocking levels of collusion”.

There is little doubt that the British state at the highest level ordered Mr Finucane’s assassination. During the 1980s, he was a formidable young lawyer, successfully defending dozens of individuals who had fallen foul to the British system of repression and corruption of the legal process. Finucane was a thorn in the side of the British establishment, exposing its vicious policies of criminalising republican political opponents.

On 17 January 1989, British cabinet minister Douglas Hogg addressed the House of Commons and denounced what he called “solicitors who are unduly sympathetic to the IRA [Irish Republican Army]”. Hogg later said that he had been briefed by “people who knew” - meaning British intelligence. On that fateful day, Hogg effectively signed Pat Finucane’s death warrant.

Less than a month later, on 12 February 1989, a loyalist death squad sledgehammered its way into the Finucane home in Belfast while the family was having Sunday dinner. In front of his wife and three children, the gunmen shot Pat Finucane 12 times in the head as he lay prone on the floor of the kitchen, his terrified children huddled under the dining table as shot after shot rang out.

After 23 years of the family’s courageous campaigning for justice, David Cameron admitted this week that the murder was carried out by loyalists in collusion with British intelligence, which had provided the killers with target details and helped in their escape on the day of the killing.

But this appalling murder is but the tip of a sordid iceberg that reveals systematic state terrorism by the British government and its military over decades in Northern Ireland.

A year before Pat Finucane’s murder, British military intelligence oversaw the smuggling of hundreds of high-powered weapons from South Africa to their loyalist paramilitary operatives in Northern Ireland.

The consignment included AK47 assault rifles, Browning semi-automatic pistols and fragmentation grenades.

In a seminal investigative study by Belfast-based civilian campaign group, Relatives For Justice, titled Collusion: 1990-1994, it was found that this supply of firepower by British intelligence to loyalist death squads resulted in a dramatic escalation of murders by these same gangs. Based on forensic and ballistics data, the weapons from South Africa were used in as many as 300 murders by loyalist death squads - nearly 10 per cent of the total death toll during the entire conflict. Some of the victims of state-sanctioned murder were republican activists, but many more were just ordinary civilians.

The murder of Pat Finucane is just one out of hundreds of killings in Northern Ireland that the British authorities perpetrated in their policy of collusion with death squads. It is a policy that grew out of its terror campaigns in East Africa and Asia and which was “optimized” in Northern Ireland. The political objective was to terrorise the population in the North of Ireland into accepting a “peace process” during the 1990s that falls way short of the legitimate claim to national self-determination and independence of a united Ireland.

Unfortunately, it may be seen as having been a partial British success given that Northern Ireland still remains a sectarian territory under British jurisdiction - despite the aspirations of the majority of Irish people across the entire island.

 

In Syria, of course, the political conditions are different. There, the majority of Syrian people support the government in Damascus and are opposed to foreign interference. The so-called uprising that the Western governments and their servile propaganda news media trumpet is nothing but a foreign covert criminal war of aggression fuelled by foreign weaponry and mercenaries.

Nevertheless, one can still discern the malevolent hand of British state terrorist expertise: the training, weapons, intelligence and logistics. Moreover, the use of terror gangs to inflict mayhem and sectarian bloodletting is straight out of the British military manual, as devised by General Sir Frank Kitson.

As car bombs tear through the bodies of Syrian schoolchildren and as loved ones end up in side-street gutters with bullets in the head - this is classic British policy of using terroristic means to achieve nefarious political ends: in this case, the dismemberment of Syrian society and the implementation of regime change."

Finian Cunningham, 1963, Belfast, Ireland is a prominent expert in international affairs. Expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his critical journalism in which he highlighted human rights violations by the Britiah-backed regime. A Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry he worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England,